czech for ice cream

Archive for the ‘Realizations’ Category

A really interesting recent realization of mine: I can decide, like, everything! Only now that I’ve developed this point of view, I realize that I hadn’t thought so before. You just assume that you are the boss in your own life, that you get to decide what your identity is, what you are working for, which kind of relationships you want to have, but I discovered that deep inside, I didn’t believe it. I always had this feeling of being controlled, of having to listen to orders by … society? what my parents told me?, lingering in the back of my mind. (Probably a lot of it is still there, but I hope to evict it soon.) It really opens a new perspective on my life because a lot of feeling helpless probably stemmed from the fact that I in deed didn’t feel like everything was in my hands. Well, I still don’t, but this slight shift in perspective does change how I see myself and my opportunities in this world.

You know, I grew up in a household where my needs were not deemed as important as my parents’ needs. If we had conflicting needs, I couldn’t count on a fair negotiation where my feelings were treated as equally important. Instead, I had to consider myself lucky when they were so grateful to meet me … well, not halfway, rather pretty close to their interests.
As a consequence, I don’t have a natural feeling of being in control of my own life and of what happens to me. Neither do I trust that I can stand up for myself. Instead, I tend to feel threatened and cornered when something happens that seriously upsets me.
Some weeks ago, when I was really unhappy with my field of studies, I analyzed what I did that made me feel stuck. I came up with several behaviors:

Staying in a field of studies that I don’t see myself working in.

Not having the skills to always voice my needs when necessary.

Paying close attention to how people look at me on the street.

Distracting myself when I am in a potentially stressful situation instead of facing the feelings that come up and helping myself through.

Perfectionism (i.e. not getting anything done due to procrastination because of the possibility of failure)

All of these points create stress, which is rather ironic because I want to be good to myself. But I will not heal when I don’t learn to leave these old habits behind.
Unfortunately, it’s not really intuitive to stay with the anxiety, fear and other uncomfortable feelings that (would) come up (if) when I want to face the reasons for these habits.
Still a hard, long way to go.